Maheta Molango, Keith Alexander and some car keys

Although seven days have elapsed since Keith Alexander passed away, even now I still can’t quite comprehend the fact he’s no longer here.

It feels like I’ve been locked in some parallel universe and I’m just waiting for someone to drag me out before telling me the last week has just been a nightmarish sham.

Football, in general, seems to be struggling to deal with his death and although there are a lot of aspects wrong with the game, the way the sport has rallied has been truly magnificent.

But it’s his family that my heart goes out to and nobody can begin to imagine what they are going through after losing such a special man.

As BBC Radio Lincolnshire presenter Michael Hortin eloquently put it in his own tribute, it’s left a giant hole in the lives of Keith’s friends, but to his family it must be a chasm.

At least the last seven days have provided time for reflection and personally, reliving my time working with, and knowing, Keith has been an utterly joyous experience.

When somebody you know dies, you force yourself to unlock the vault to those times that you thought were lost forever.I guess the memory is truly a fantastic piece of machinery because some of the stories that I’ve been able to recollect, I thought had disappeared.

The trigger to some belting yarns stemmed from flicking through the seasons and reading his old columns and the news from his four-year tenure.

And there was no doubt Keith did have a wicked sense of humour. I remember one occasion when I turned up at the ground ready to go through the topics for his weekly column.

As usual, I was greeted with a cup of tea and a biscuit, but before we had even begun, a clearly irritated Maheta Molango was almost smashing down the office door.

“Gaffer, gaffer,” he cried in his Swiss and Spanish tongue, one of the weirdest accents I’ve ever heard.“I am not here to be a comedian, I am here to score goals and be a professional.

“There is no doubt in my mind gaffer, that if I wanted to be a comedian I would have joined the circus not Lincoln City.” Keith asked him to calm down, looked him in the eye and asked him what the problem was.

Someone had stolen his keys to his fancy car that was parked near the City school and he was worried that it would be left on four bricks by the time he returned.

In an instant, Keith bellowed down the hall that he didn’t care who had the keys but they had to give them back “sharpish”.

He eventually returned, shut the door, sat down and let out a huge belly laugh before quipping: “We’ve got a right set of 'expletive' here, you know.”

And that was the beauty of the man.

Maheta received his keys back, which were in somebody’s boot, while the players had their laugh. Everyone was happy.

Ultimately, it proved he was a fantastic man manager who dealt expertly with his players making sure they were all looked after, individually and collectively.

I could sit here and write bundles of tales but there are not enough column inches.Like the time when I helped him out of a sticky situation with the FA, but I fear a three-match ban if I tell it!Or when he joked with me that he had found the next best striker since Pele and gave me a DVD of him.

I watched it and all it did was show this kid doing keep ups and when I rang him to tell him that it must have been a mistake, he just cracked up.

They were good, good, times. And even though he is no longer here, he still puts a smile on your face and that’s one of the most precious talents somebody can ever have at their disposal.

There will be more memories of Keith in Monday's special supplement. I could tell hundreds.